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Checking In On Nouveau Gallium3D For Mesa 9.1

Phoronix: Checking In On Nouveau Gallium3D For Mesa 9.1

Up this holiday weekend on Phoronix are benchmarks of the open-source Nouveau Gallium3D when comparing the driver's state on the Git branches of Mesa 9.0 and Mesa 9.1-devel. While checking in on the latest Mesa Nouveau code, three NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards were benchmarked from a development snapshot of Ubuntu 13.04.

The problem is the whole process. Mesa 9.1 is expected to enable more features, but it can be performance taxing if not well optimized. As we have no comment and/or screenshots about render differences, we can't get anything from the article at all.

Is Nouveau generally good on just about any card? I've ONLY dealt with AMD and Intel Gfx chips. On Intel's side you just assume its good, and on AMD's side with Radeon you assume anything less than the current gen is good (Southern Islands-- im looking at you -_-). Is Nouveau basically the same story as radeon? You assume any Nvidia card thats NOT the current generation will more or less work "just fine"? (I realize "just fine" is kind of an abstract thought considering they are reverse engineering)

I ask because with AMD....in trouble financially my next laptop is either going to be straight-Intel or Intel-Nvidia and my next desktop I was gonna go Nvidia as well. And I'd prefer to use the open source drivers just so I have less stability problems and dont have to worry about Xorg updates breaking the driver

It's a little harder for nouveau devs to get current-gen hardware working as there is absolutely no technical details about the hardware, and they have to reverse-engineering everything.

If 3D accel is not you primary concern, i think you can go with nouveau at least with gt500 series, I had it working even better than binary blob as this one did not detect correctly my monitor with DVI link (nouveau just worked, not for 3D but worked, I as even able to configure my dual screen setup). I don't know about video decoding support though.

I ask because with AMD....in trouble financially my next laptop is either going to be straight-Intel or Intel-Nvidia and my next desktop I was gonna go Nvidia as well. And I'd prefer to use the open source drivers just so I have less stability problems and dont have to worry about Xorg updates breaking the driver

I do not get the logic here. You want to support free drivers, and yet you are switching to a company that does not support them because of concerns about a company that does running out of cashflow?

The FOSS driver developers at AMD were thankfully spared cuts (as were the graphics team in general I believe). Ever think that you could just be making things worse? I can understand jumping to Intel as they have been investing more recently than AMD (not to shortchange their work though), but I do not get jumping to Nvidia if free software drivers are important to you. If you do not really care then great, use the blob and be happy about it, but if you care about FOSS drivers I really do not understand why one would consider using a Nvidia card if they have a choice.

I do not get the logic here. You want to support free drivers, and yet you are switching to a company that does not support them because of concerns about a company that does running out of cashflow?

The FOSS driver developers at AMD were thankfully spared cuts (as were the graphics team in general I believe). Ever think that you could just be making things worse? I can understand jumping to Intel as they have been investing more recently than AMD (not to shortchange their work though), but I do not get jumping to Nvidia if free software drivers are important to you. If you do not really care then great, use the blob and be happy about it, but if you care about FOSS drivers I really do not understand why one would consider using a Nvidia card if they have a choice.

Because one does not buy expensive hardware for charity but to actually use and enjoy it. Open source drivers are a plus but not the primary feature.

I speak from my experience. Almost a year ago chose AMD 7870 for my new PC because of the promise of open source drivers! Bad desicion because both drivers are shit.

My point is that I do not understand why someone who DOES CARE about free software drivers would jump ship to Nvidia due to AMD's recent finical problems. I would understand it if he wanted to use Nvidia's blob, and said as much.